


The Anna Karenina Principle

by FizzingWizard



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: it wants to be but doesnt manage it, not a kid fic exactly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 14:19:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4832351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FizzingWizard/pseuds/FizzingWizard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Logan doesn't know if Mystique can pull off being a mom. He knows Azazel will never amount to more than a deadbeat. Much as he doesn't appreciate playing nanny, it's the role Logan finds himself thrust into more often than not. And it's one he wishes he could shirk like he does everything else. Because he'll probably fail. Kids are... kids deserve better.</p><p>Good intentions, wrecked childhoods, the gulf between love and possession. Coal in Christmas stockings puts a fire in the hearth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Anna Karenina Principle

 

Rain’s just starting up and the sky is chrome-plated as I roll down the drive. The gate’s iron bars are studded with dripping beads like a woman’s necklace by the time I reach it. Key in the pass code; hear Jeannie ask who it is, as if she don’t already know. I tell her it’s me. The gate swings open and I kick my bike into gear just as it starts to pour down in sheets.

I park in the garage next to a sports car I haven’t seen before. It’s lobster red. Must be Summers’s.

“Look at you,” comes a voice, a satin contralto with a Kenyan lilt. Ororo’s on the steps, one elegant hand resting on the rail, giving her the look of a heroine from a 1930s romance flick. Co-starring Cary Grant, maybe. Clark Gable. Only she ain’t never swooned into anyone’s arms. She’s got a mohawk and she’s in jeans and a T-shirt that says _Radio City,_ and damned if she ain’t the most regal woman I ever laid eyes on.

“’Lo, Ro. Look at me what?”

“Well, your pants, for one thing. But, all of you, really.”

There’s a splash of grayish mud covering my boots up my thighs. I give it a cursory once-over. “Y’know, that only happened as I was comin’ up the drive.”

“Mhmm.” She’s doing that _thing_ with her brow. She can’t raise just one but I know that’s what she’s going for. “And your face?”

Shit. I must look like hell. “Got into a scrap at the bar,” I tell her, and grin for good measure.

“Aha. A scrap. And what became of the other guy?”

“Probably still chuckin’ up his lunch in a gutter somewhere.”

She shakes her head. “Just don’t come in through the foyer. And take a shower. Man-Thing smells better than you.”

“Sweet talk won’t get you nowhere, darlin’.”

Her hoop earrings flutter as she turns and disappears the way she came. I stamp my feet on the mat. Before heading in, I take off my sludge-strewn bomber jacket and leave it draped over the handlebars.

Sleek polished mahogany and towering white walls are a nerve-numbing switch-up from bike exhaust and old logging roads that wind through the woods of upstate New York. All so clean it’s almost clinical. There’s a Chinese vase full of red roses outside the nearest bathroom. I thumb one of the blooms, and a ladybug jumps off my wrist into the petals.

Fifteen minutes later, pink and shaven, I stroll into the kitchen to scrounge up a meal (been living off canned beans and jerky for months), and sitting there at the table is Elf.

I stop and stare.

He stares right back. His eyes are as round and yellow as I remember. They’ve always looked bigger than they are thanks to that glowy thing they do. And just as unreadable.

But it’s him, it’s him for sure, I know it sure as I know my own scent, even though I ain’t seen him since he was a skinny little mophead. He is still skinny, but not so little. His scent has changed a bit, which is to be expected. Puberty wrecks havoc with the hormones.

The seconds drag into each other. We’re like a pair of raccoons I once saw, spooked to discover someone else aiming for the same trash can. Caught between wanting the other to make a move, and feeling terrified of what could happen if they did.

Finally he breaks the silence, says, “Logan,” as if he last saw me yesterday, thank God, I ain’t been this tongue-tied since Jeannie showed up in that backless scarlet number that is everything heaven’s meant to be.

I clear my throat. “Ah.” It sounds like I’ve been gargling gravel. “You’re back.”

“Yep.” He nods. “I’m back.”

Silence returns. My throat’s dry. I open the fridge and swipe a beer.

His toes drum on the edge of the table. I said he’s sitting, but only as much as Kurt Darkholme ever sits, which is to say, he’s not sitting at all. He’s perched on the table with his knees in the air, looking like a misplaced gargoyle. That twisting, twining tail of his draws curlicues in the air like a question.

“You, uh.” I swig the beer. “You’re still blue.”

He nods again somewhat over-enthusiastically. Reminds me of a horse tossing its head to relieve an itch at the bit. “Still blue. And you’re, you’re still…” He fumbles.

“Hairy?” I suggest. “Macho? Brawny?”

“Short,” says Elf.

After a brief pause to reflect on that stunning blow, I give a sharp bark of laughter. He puts on a sheepish smile, now that’s something that ain’t changed either. I slap his shoulder. “Ain’t no arguin’ with that, Elf. Come down and let me look at ya. If you haven’t shot up like a bean sprout, I’ll eat my hat.”

He smiles for real and hops to the tile. “You got maybe five inches on me,” I muse.

“More than that.”

“Nah. Not a chance.”

“I’m 177 centimeters.”

“Ah, whatever. I’ve had it.” Can’s empty already so I toss it in the bin and go for another. “Ya want one?”

“Um, sure.”

“Wait a sec, are you even old enough?”

“In the UK I am,” he replies defensively.

Chuckling, I pop the tab on a can and hand it to him. “Good enough for me.”

He gulps it like a pro. The UK is where he’s been these past six or seven years, getting an education and living a life we couldn’t sustain on this side of the pond, thanks to certain factors. It’s never occurred to me that he’d come back. Even though some odd months have passed since those _certain factors_ up and shipped out on us.

Scratch that. It’s been over a year and half since old Mags put a name to the game and took off with a slice of Chuck’s recruits. The Prof ain’t lost nothing, by my count. They were lousy traitors, every one.

“Gonna stay here long?”

“Yes - well, I mean -” He glances off to the side. It’s imperceptible to anyone not used to his face. “I always meant to come back. When Moira said Charles was starting a school, I thought now’s as good a time as any.”

“She doin’ good?”

“Yes. I am trying to convince her to come back too. And bring Rahne. But she’s… resistant.”

“Too much bad blood.”

His brow creases. “Yeah.”

I kick out a chair with my foot and sink into it. We sip our beers wordlessly. He doesn’t seem bothered. Probably remembers that I’m not anyone’s definition of a chatterbox.

After a while I recall that I came here for something more substantial than a brew, so I root around the cupboards, finding white bread and ham and a block of cheese and lettuce. Elf perks up and is at my elbow instantly, saying he knows where the mustard’s stashed. We make sandwiches - he adds mayo, the smell almost gags me - and it’s nice, to be eating with him here, in this room, as if no time has passed at all. Memories filter in like the rain pelting the window glass, like bullets. I don’t know why I never expected to see him again.

If we ever met, out on the road somewhere, I’d figured he would hate me.

But with his cheeks puffy with sandwich, he doesn’t look about to hate anyone. When next he speaks, it’s about some baseball game he saw (“Scott tells me Shea Stadium is gone now. You know Scott, right? I wasn’t sure how long he’s been here”). _He_ deplaned two months ago, after Ororo picked him up in Scotland, and it’s like walking into a dream, he says, where everything’s just as he remembers it in real life except ever so slightly off. The new rec room meets with his approval, and so does Scott Summers, who shares his taste in video games, and the place as a whole seems - “brighter.”

We chat a bit more, and then I start to feel the tug of bone-deep exhaustion that only comes over me when I’m here, when I can turn over the watch to the likes of Ro or Jeannie or Slim.

“I’m hittin’ the sack.” The chair groans as I push it back. “It’s, uh…”

_It’s good to see you again._ No - can’t say that. This ain’t just a reunion of old friends, or even mentor and student. God knows, I’ve been a miserable excuse in both categories. Taught him more about running away than anything else.

Even so, he’s here, he came back. No matter how painful it’s gotta be to walk these halls again. He ain’t running.

He deserves more than generic politeness, at least from me.

But I’m still searching for the right words when he claps my shoulder with his odd shadowy hand and smiles, and it’s the kind of smile you never see in paintings or photos, powerful in fragility, never mind that it’s punctuated with a flash of fangs. “I’ve missed you, Logan.”

“Yeah.” I grip his shoulder in return. “Me too, Elf.”

Later, I lie in my bed and count the seconds between rolls of thunder. It’s the wind that gets to me most, whistling through the treetops with the promise of banshees. Sean may be out there himself. Times like this may be the only chance he gets to cut loose.

I don’t check out in minutes the way I usually do when I’m here. Instead my stomach’s leaden, I’m hyper aware of every footstep that sounds in the hall, even the lack of odor in the bedsheets bugs me. With each drawn out rumble I half expect a spade-tipped tail to form out of the agitated darkness, or slender feminine fingernails to dance up my forearm, over my biceps, to graze my collarbone butterfly-soft until they dig cruelly into the notch of my throat, and blood runs in rivulets between the floorboards.


End file.
